I'd like to comment on this paragraph (pending, hopefully, a response to my earlier comment on the second paragraph that appeared in this same comment).DCHindley wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2017 1:17 pm When I evaluate a secondary source (as this has to consist of over 90% of what has survived), I mentally remove the author's "color commentary" on matters such as motives and ethics of the protagonists from the narrative and see what kind of straightforward account is left. These stripped-down narratives are what I prefer to compare and contrast to ferret out historical nuggets.
I'd like to suggest that the method of reading history proposed here has got the cart before the horse. It is what some historians today would consider a naive approach to historical research.
Before we start sifting motives etc in the writing, we need to ask what the author is on about. Why is he writing at all? For whom? Why is he writing about the things in his narrative? Where does all of that stuff come from? This is especially so with ancient historians because their reasons for writing "history" were quite different from those of modern professional historians.
I mentioned Steve Mason's new work on the Jewish War before. Mason asks those sorts of questions of Josephus and the answers -- a study of the intellectual culture Josephus was immersed in -- leads him to realize he cannot accept much of J's narrative of the war at all as "historical". To oversimplify, Mason uncovers the evidence that Josephus is writing primarily for his peers to impress them with his "wisdom" and "goodness" as a community leader and intellectual.
Even the narratives themselves cannot always be assumed to be grounded in J's historical research or personal historical memory. That would be to assume a professional historical interest alien to his time. Ancient historians were very often moralizers, writing about moral lessons, impressing audiences with their sagacity. Truthiness, truth-likeness, verisimilitude could be as good as the real thing, or even better.
Historical narratives could sometimes be woven from an author's imagination as he drew upon strands of Homer, tragedians, poets or prophets. We have long believed Herodotus, 'father of history', to have travelled widely to gain first-hand information about the peoples and customs he writes about. Yet some historians think there are good reasons to think he never stepped foot outside of the Hellas at all.
